At Conway - we are proud to purchase from a growing portfolio of prized Canadian manufacturers - many of which excel at custom-order furniture.

Custom-ordering fabric upholstery from our suppliers such as Decor-rest, Palliser, Superstyle, Trend-line, La-Z-Boy, King-Koil, Leather-craft and many others, involve choosing the style and pieces you want, and having them covered in a custom fabric upholstery of your own choosing. Different fabrics are graded differently based on a confluence of factors that can affect their pricing, as well as their effectiveness for certain applications.

We have outlined several key things to keep in mind when comparing different fabrics:

• Grading has nothing to do with durability.
  A common assumption to make is that 'higher graded fabrics will last longer than lower graded ones' - this is not true and in fact quite often is the opposite. Fabric are often graded higher because they are more intricate or costly to manufacture, or are made with more varied or more delicate materials. Because of this, many of the more 'intricate' fabric patterns are high-grade fabrics, which are more expensive and actually more delicate, and so less suitable to high-use scenarios.
• Similar graded fabrics can still be very different.
  As a continuation of the previous point - even two fabrics graded the exact same may be very different in terms of durability or ideal applications. For example two fabrics may be graded the same - but if one is made of polyester and the other is a poly/linen blend, the pure polyester fabric will be more resilient to wear, moisture, and even sub-bleaching. Additionally it might be that the poly/linen blend successfully withstood more 'rubs' during testing, and was rated higher (ie. Heavy-duty residential vs. light-duty residential) even though the manufacturer has graded them the same for pricing purposes.

Fabric Cleaning Codes

The world of upholstery uses a few standard abbreviations to indicate how to safely clean an upholstered product. Your new upholstery should have a tag on it somewhere indicating these codes. If you cannot locate the tag don't hesitate to contact us and we would be happy to provide you with the manufacturers cleaning code for your piece!